Obama to nominates a woman as Fed chair

Published: 09 October 2013

WASHINGTON - Janet Yellen will become the first woman to hold the most powerful job in the world economy after administration officials said that President Barack Obama would nominate her as chair of the US Federal Reserve.

Obama will formally nominate Yellen at a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. Current chairman Ben Bernanke will also attend. The choice of Yellen - an architect of the Fed's aggressive monetary stimulus in recent years as the present vice-chair - will redouble its commitment to those policies and may lengthen the period for which US interest rates stay at zero.

Her appointment represents a dramatic change of fortune after Obama's preferred candidate, former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, was forced to withdraw on September 15 following strong opposition from Democratic senators.

But Yellen may still face a difficult confirmation, with a senior Republican on the Senate banking committee, Bob Corker, suggesting he would vote against her.

"I voted against vice-chairman Yellen's original nomination to the Fed in 2010 because of her dovish views on monetary policy. We will closely examine her record since that time, but I am not aware of anything that demonstrates her views have changed," Corker said.

Bernanke will step down in January with a likely reputation as one of the greatest chairs of the Fed after he helped the US to navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Yellen, 67, will be appointed to a four-year term as chair of the Fed that runs until January 2018. She will take over an economy still suffering from a 7.3 per cent unemployment rate more than four years after the end of a deep recession.